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The death toll from more than a week of devastating floods in south-eastern Ethiopia has risen to at least 154 with nearly 260 000 people left homeless, officials said on Wednesday. The raging waters have taken a huge toll on livestock and agriculture in the remote, impoverished region, they said.
Media organisations have slammed threats by the government to clamp down on journalists, saying stricter laws would cause a local and international backlash. Tusi Fokane, director of the South African branch of the Media Institute of Southern Africa, said it would be very difficult to pass strict media laws in South Africa.
A court has convicted 13 people and given them sentences ranging from the death penalty to two years’ imprisonment for their role in the killing of a senior World Health Organisation (WHO) official in Burundi. Defence lawyers have not indicated whether they will appeal the verdict.
A forensic accountant has testified that Michael Jackson owed -million more than he had in assets about the time a damaging documentary was aired, bolstering prosecutors’ claims that financial distress led the superstar to panic. The accountant testified on Tuesday that he traced Jackson’s finances from 1999 to 2004.
A British five-year-old boy got a nasty surprise when a 60cm snake slithered out of his breakfast-cereal box, his mother said on Wednesday. Jordan Willett, from Dawley, Shropshire, in England’s West Midlands, discovered the non-venomous reptile in his box of Golden Puffs on Monday.
An elderly man who mistook firefighters for burglars as they arrived to douse a small blaze at his apartment complex threatened to shoot them with a gas-powered pistol, police said on Wednesday. Authorities confiscated the pistol and two other loaded gas weapons after Tuesday’s incident in St. Poelten, about 80km west of Vienna.
Striptease is an art and should therefore be exempt from value-added tax (VAT), a Norwegian court has ruled. The Diamond Go Go Bar in Oslo took the Norwegian state to court after it tried to impose VAT on entry fees to the club. The club’s owner did, however, agree to pay VAT on the cloakroom’s revenues.
The decision to press a land claim was taken by the whole Richtersveld community and not just a section of it, an anthropologist told the Land Claims Court on Wednesday. She was testifying in support of the Richtersvelders’ demand for the return of 85 000ha of diamond-rich land and compensation that could total R2,5-billion.
President Thabo Mbeki will pay a courtesy call on newly installed Roman Catholic Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Italy on Friday and Saturday, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Wednesday. Mbeki is also scheduled to hold discussions with his Italian counterpart, President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.